Rivals Pure Storage, EMC Trade New Charges

There’s not a lot of love being exchanged right now between EMC and Pure Storage, a much younger rival. Now Pure is accusing EMC of purloining one of its boxes, while EMC leveled new patent infringement charges against the Silicon Valley startup.

The battle centers on the hot market for systems that use flash memory chips rather than disks to store data.

EMC fired the first court salvo, recently filing a suit in federal court in Massachusetts alleging that 44 of its sales representatives and other professionals have joined Pure since August 2011 under suspicious circumstances and colluded to steal confidential EMC documents.

On Tuesday, Pure Storage responded with documents that not only deny those charges but include counter-charges of its own.

“Just over a year ago, EMC surreptitiously obtained a Pure Storage array, absconded with the device to EMC offices, and unlawfully tested the machine to learn the trade secrets underlying Pure Storage’s success,” Pure alleges in court papers filed Tuesday.

“EMC’s theft was not an isolated incident, but part of an institutional practice that routinely employs unlawful, anti-competitive means to dominate the data storage market.”

EMC insists that it is Pure that is engaging in unlawful activity, amplifying that assertion later Tuesday with a suit accusing Pure of violating five EMC patents.

“This latest patent infringement lawsuit is further evidence that Pure Storage has engaged in unauthorized use of EMC’s proprietary and patented technology. We are simply taking the necessary legal action to protect EMC’s rights.”

EMC, based in Hopkinton, Mass., is the biggest maker of systems that use disk drives to store corporate data and has also incorporated flash chips into some of its products. But the company on Nov. 14 stepped up its attack on Pure and other rivals with a long-awaited “all-flash” system stemming from its acquisition of the Israeli startup XtremIO.

Scott Dietzen, Pure’s chief executive, has flatly rejected allegations that his company engaged in any conduct that violated the law, particularly insofar as it relates to any legal obligations of the former EMC employees who joined his company.

Pure’s court filing says EMC obtained one of Pure’s storage systems through intermediary companies, which bought the box and transferred it from New Hampshire to EMC offices in Silicon Valley and back again before Pure retrieved the system. Pure “found the machine damaged to such an extent that it could not be reused or resold,” the Pure court filing states.

Buying and testing competitors’ products is not uncommon in high-tech circles. But Pure alleges that EMC’s conduct violated a customer licensing agreement.

The new EMC suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, cites patents associated with various data storage techniques, including processes such as error correction, reducing data duplication and scheduling reading and recording operations.

Dietzen said the new suit by EMC is not particularly surprising. “Pure set out to do something extraordinary, and which is profoundly disruptive to the incumbent mechanical storage vendors,” he wrote in an email. “Given how quickly hundreds of millions of storage spend is shifting from disk to flash, the incumbents are increasingly desperate to slow this market transition.”

While Pure has not reviewed the EMC patent claims, Dietzen said his company is very confident in the worth of its own patents and has $150 million in a recent funding round to help continue the fight in court if necessary and indemnify customers for any legal risks.

“Our view remains that this litigation is a side show to the main event as the storage market as all-flash displaces mechanical disk,” Dietzen said. “EMC’s real intention is to slow our progress toward building the next great storage company, but the flash tsunami will continue.”

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